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ZERO

It’s day two of the StyleZeitgeist book week, where we continue to review our favorite Fall art books. ZERO (Walther Konig, $60) is a comprehensive book on the eponymous mid- 20th Century international art movement, which was largely forgotten for a while, but has recently had a major resurgence. Major dealers/collectors like Axel Vervoordt have been championing the ZERO artists like Lucio Fontana and Gunther Uecker for a while now, and last year the Guggenheim museum has held a major ZERO retrospective.

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Axel Vervoordt’s Universe

I first came across the work of the Belgian art collector-dealer-interior-designer-manufacturer-real-estate-developer Axel Vervoordt when I reviewed his 2011 book, “Wabi Inspirations.” I was struck by how the interiors Vervoordt conceived reflected the beauty of simplicity, decay, and aging that are championed by the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi. It was not anything I expected from a major European collector, raised on Louis XIV furniture and antiquaries, whose roster of clients includes major celebrities and the old-time aristocracy.

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Alexey Titarenko: The City Is A Novel

One of the defining qualities of photography is that it can cast the familiar in a different light, to make you look again. The photos in Alexey Titarenko’s new book The City Is a Novel (Damiani, $60) do just that. Titarenko’s signature style is a washed out grayscale that recalls early platinotypes. If you lived in the Soviet Union, as did Titarenko (and I), you would understand where the grayness comes from. Everything in the Soviet Union seemed gray, reflecting the drabness in the water supply, from the country’s soul to its streets.

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Berlinde De Bruyckere Monograph

The Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere is famous for her striking sculptures of wax and epoxy that resemble flesh in all its disfigured, vulnerable glory. She has been making these since the 1990s, but there has not been a definitive monograph of her work until now.

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Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace

Postpunk and goth are two subcultures that came and went without a bang – amorphous, indefinable, unbracketed. There was something, and its elements were clear enough to see, but to make a structure of the thing was futile. And that is exactly the way the scene liked it.

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Roger Ballen – Outland

The New York born, South Africa-based photographer Roger Ballen’s breakthrough came when he published “Outland” in 2001. The book made a splash, sold out quickly, and is now being republished by Phaidon. Ballen was already an established photographer when he produced a video I Fink U Freeky for Die Antwoord in 2012. Most recently, his work has been painted onto the backs of leather jackets for the latest Comme des Garcons Homme Plus collection.

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THE SALT OF THE EARTH: WIM WENDERS & SEBASTIAO SALGADO

One day, back in the 80s, the German filmmaker Wim Wenders saw pictures of the Brazilian-born photographer Sebastiao Salgado at a gallery in Los Angeles. He was so impressed that he bought two prints on the spot. Since, Salgado has quickly become his favorite photographer. Wenders continued to follow his work, and one day, being who he is, Wenders decided to simply knock on Salgado’s door.